Do not be with someone that does not want to be with you

There are times when individuals stay with partners who do not want to get more serious. This situation happens when one person, for whatever reason, feels that it is better to stay with someone they have to convince to change their minds, than it would be to break up and start over by finding someone new to be with. Sometimes, the person stays because of a deep held belief he or she is with the right person and is willing to wait it out. Other times, a person stays in this situation due to a deep fear of being alone and not finding anyone else or anyone better. Then there are those situations where the circumstances have to do with the pressure of a biological clock that is so close to no longer ticking that it feels riskier to break up and look for someone else to commit to in such a short time frame, than it is to stick it out, hoping to pressure a partner into agreeing to make something more happen.

Regardless of the reasons, the general rule is that if the person that you are interested in having something more serious with (moving to the next level in the stages of the relationship hierarchy) is not interested, nor even open to talking about what would have to happen for your relationship to move forward, the best course of action is to walk away and find someone else.

The emotional damage done when a person stays with a partner that does not want to get serious is the most significant reason for leaving. Constantly being pushed away and rejected, can lead to a repeating behavior pattern of responding to that kind of lack of affection. In other words, the longer you stay with someone that rejects your advances, the more you get used to being rejected when expressing intimate interests, and it can lead to the point in the future, where you learned to only feel romantically interested in people if they push you away and get turned off by the people who accept your emotional advances. We become engaged with the challenge and the pursuit of love, but bored of actually having love. It is not about what we intellectually know is better for us. It is about how we respond emotionally to those behaviors by our attachment history.

You may intellectually know that the person who is available to you and accepting of your affection is the better partner for you long term, but you will not be able to feel attraction for such people if you have programmed yourself to only emotionally respond to people that continually reject you.

Simply put, do not value someone that is unable to value you back. It is time to find someone else.

Frank Kermit, ND is Montreal’s #1 Dating-and-Relationship Coach and a NaturoTherapist covered under employee insurance plans under naturopath. He is a best selling author, keynote speaker, match-maker, conducts pre-marital coaching, relationship columnist for The West End Times Newspaper and also appears regularly on the Dr Laurie Betito radio program Passion on CJAD 800 AM. Come out and meet Frank in person at Frank’s Saturday night workshops, support groups and public appearances. Tel: 514-680-3278, email: frank@franktalks.com